


The End of the World

by sevensus



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: :), Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Ambiguous/Open Ending, But Oikawa Is Not Okay, Fantasy Creatures, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Iwaizumi Is A Bounty Hunter, M/M, Prince Oikawa Tooru, specifically neglect?, there is a LOT of crying here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21959791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensus/pseuds/sevensus
Summary: “Hey. You coming?” The man called out once more. Tooru was snapped back to reality: he was out of the castle, and while it was warm there, Tooru suffocated in its heat. His steps were little flurries as he caught up to the man. “I thought you said you weren’t going to take me.”“That was until you proved to be an utter dumbass,” the man scoffed. Tooru’s pout reminded him of childhood again, of asking his father time and time again what a field of flowers looked like. Although there were always picture books and landscape paintings to supply him with enough visions of flower fields for decades, it was not enough. It was never enough.“How rude!” Tooru pointed out, crossing his arms, yet walking alongside the man. “Maybe I’ll go alone if I’m just paying you to hurt my feelings.”—After years of staying inside, Tooru's first step into the outside is a trip to the end of the world.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	1. The Beginning of the End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [panda_kyu5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/panda_kyu5/gifts).



Tooru didn’t know it yet, but even the shadows watched him walk.

With a cloak the coarse colour of the common peoples’ clothes wrapped around his shoulders, a thin white fur lining the hood as Tooru softly  _ clink _ ed his way to the middle of the tavern, the young man stood out to anyone who was smart enough to notice the fluid movement and fine quality of his clothes. His fingers, drumming the soft wood of the bar, did not have the same roughness around their edges as a farmer or blacksmith or baker would have; instead, they were slender, and his clean fingernails dug trenches next to the knife-runs. He flinched when the barstool’s legs stuttered underneath him, never having been cut the same length. The floor creaked under his heavy boots.

This man was an outsider, and the glint of coin shone brighter in the tavern lamplight than any bright-toothed smile or spark of life.

Of course, packing up to leave his room, Tooru understood that this was goodbye, at least for a little while, to his plush duvet and canopy, to the lush rug that greeted his feet after stepping out from a soak, saving him from cold tile, to the berries that exploded over his tongue when he bit into their tart flesh. In one night, Tooru packed everything (that he thought) he needed, which included extra clothes, food, money, and a drinking canteen, and for the first time in his life, he stepped outside of the castle.

The cobblestone was foreign to Tooru Oikawa, whose first instinct was to breathe in the cold air of the evening. The feeling of something other than uncomfortable warmth filling his lungs shocked him, woke him up. It felt like  _ home _ . Tooru opened his eyes, released the tension from his shoulders, and stepped into the unknown.

Tooru called on the bartender, ordering first a glass of water, which caught eyes in a bar, and then a glass of ale, realizing how inconspicuous he was. Every corner peered through him, having listened to the clear consonants of the palace-dweller; the tavern fell into a hushed lull, the young man’s lips not slurring his words together even once. Tooru quieted with the men until the din of the common people resumed. 

“Hey there.” Tooru had turned to the man next to him - he was startlingly attractive, with tan skin and short hair, sticking up in spikes. The man was very different from everything Tooru had been warned about in the stories his governess had told him in his youth, of double-crossing assassins and common brutes who would simply  _ devour _ pretty young princes like him. However, having received the slightest irritated glance, Tooru quickly waved his hand at the man and slipped into his Prince Mode. He equipped himself with his bright-as-stars smile, the centre of the show in any given court. “I’m looking for a guide to take me to the end of the Earth.”

The man raised an eyebrow and turned towards Tooru, clearly unamused by this stranger’s request. His shoulders were broad, and the dark material that covered them looked well-worn but in good shape. The man wore dark brown leather accessories, which ranged from a belt, to a satchel that hung by his side, to a very smart pair of combat boots, the soles thick and the exterior well-polished. “Do I look like a tour guide to you?”

Tooru’s eyes, having inspected the way the man’s bicep curled with his elbow on the table, drew his eyes to meet the other’s brown ones. A small, curled smile danced at the corners of his lips.“Well, anyone does if they’re paid well enough.”

“You’re looking in the wrong places, then.” The man scowled, a dark little look that reminded Tooru of the court children, and then turned back to his drink. Oh, well. Tooru looked down to his own golden-yellow ale. Bottoms up.

“How much are you paying?”A deep voice popped up from the back shadows, and Tooru turned to see a man whose scars outnumbered the lines on his face creeping closer to him, along with an entourage of brutish-looking people with jackal smiles. 

Something about these men seemed off., villainous, but Tooru couldn’t place what when they didn’t have a storybook exterior to them. The leading man grinned. “What? Suddenly shy, sweetheart?”

Tooru shook his head. His eyes ran over the man, finding little chinks in which his hard-plated suit did not cover the soft flesh underneath - in that moment, Tooru wished that he had picked up his rapier from the armory. All other patrons absorbed themselves in their conversation, seeing as the wealthy young stranger’s request had been claimed. “No, I’m not. I’ll pay twice- no, triple the amount that you would normally charge if you can ensure me a safe passage.”

“You pay upfront?” The man asked, and he was close enough that Tooru smelt the twisted beer on his breath, could sense the glint in the eyes of his people. “How’d you come by that money, eh? Might have to pay you a visit after all that’s done is done. See if you need anything else, yeah?”

Tooru puffed out his chest, sitting straighter up in his creaky barstool, the hiring words on the tip of his tongue, seeing as no one else had approached him. 

But a quick grasp on his arm dragged Tooru outside of the tavern, and the ale that Tooru had been nursing found itself orphaned in the bar. Nothing about the grasp on his arm even suggested a hint of doubt, and though Tooru was unsteady on his feet, there wasn’t a part of him that felt unsafe. There, outside the tavern, grasping his arm, was the man that Tooru initially spoke to - the same one that first denied his request.

The man’s eyes must have been needles, for his gaze was sharp when it pierced through Tooru. The moonlight at this hour caught Tooru by surprise by the way it bathed the man in a silvery glow on one side of his face and the dull golden light shone on the other in equilibrium. Dear God, the light highlighted the curve of his lips and his cheekbones, carved from some regal oak. Those lips parted, and in a hushed manner, he spoke once more.

“Are you a dumbass, or just normally that stupid?”

Tooru’s jaw fell open. “What?”

“Close your mouth, you’ll swallow a fly and choke,” the man said, and Tooru, begrudgingly, complied. The man’s expression was hard, but not steel, as he pressed a hand to his forehead in exasperation. “Everyone with at least half a mind knows not to mess with those kinds of people, but then  _ you _ waltz in with a fancy cloak like you’re  _ hot shit _ and try to hire them. You must be some sort of masochist.”

Said cloak swished around Tooru as the grass murmured quiet protests under his feet; one step closer to the man and he’d be close enough to run a finger through his hair, or at least jab it at his chest, an accusation. “Hey,  _ you’re _ th-”

“Wait here.”

The man’s steps were heavy on the grass, but once he re-entered the tavern, they made none of the creaking noises Tooru’s boots had made. Once more, upon opening the tavern door, golden light washed upon the two of them, lighting them from the back. Tooru’s breath was visible when he exhaled, the night’s chill wrapping around him and seeping into his pants-legs. 

The man’s first steps along the dimly-lit cobblestone path didn’t register to Tooru, whose gaze was caught in the picture of the town, which he had completely ignored before in favour of his destination. Before leaving, Tooru’s lips and tongue could recite, by pure muscle memory alone, the directions to the key locations in his nearby village, having repeated them before going to bed each night for a full year.

… But the roofs of the village looked like squat little trees in a forest, Tooru thought to himself, taken aback. He could almost count them, the numbers following themselves with their spoken counterparts on the tip of his tongue.

“Hey. You coming?” The man called out once more. Tooru was snapped back to reality: he was out of the castle, and while it was warm there, Tooru suffocated in its heat. His steps were little flurries as he caught up to the man. “I thought you said you weren’t going to take me.”

“That was until you proved to be an utter dumbass,” the man scoffed. Tooru’s pout reminded him of childhood again, of asking his father time and time again what a field of flowers looked like. Although there were always picture books and landscape paintings to supply him with enough visions of flower fields for decades, it was not enough. It was never enough.

“How rude!” Tooru pointed out, crossing his arms, yet walking alongside the man. “Maybe I’ll go alone if I’m just paying you to hurt my feelings.”

“Alright. Tell me which way is north, then.” The man didn’t stop, instead turning to the left to a building akin to the shanties Tooru was told that only the most unfortunate of people would inhabit; however, the building still stood up appropriately, solid wood seeming deteriorated under the guise of chipped paint and the slightest rust covering the nails holding the structure together.

Tooru’s lips didn’t sew themselves shut, but rather, were held together by the man’s question. North is the uppermost direction, but the young man recognized that he only had a one in four chance of pointing it out correctly - that is, one-eighth counting the sub-directions. 

Inside the building, the distant braying of horses caught Tooru off-guard, but it made sense that the two men would be going to a livery stable. With a pointed look coming from the man, a quick  _ oh _ passed through Tooru’s lips as he pulled out (what he hoped would be) enough money for two horses.

The man’s pace did not slow down as he made his way to the stable. Tooru was caught in a jaunty walk-run, keeping up with him. 

“My name is Tooru Oikawa,” Tooru introduced himself, the promise of adventure, like the heroes of his books, rushing through him and squeezing his heart. Blood, in its warm splendor, filled him like air to his lungs and the summer song of crickets and katydids. “And you are…?”

*

“Iwa-chan, look what I bought!” 

The village, weeks away from Tooru’s kingdom, was lively in the autumn harvest, and the young man just couldn’t keep his excitement at bay for the upcoming autumnal equinox. Jumping around from stall to stall through the smell of juicy cubes of skewered meat and vegetables as well as the culmination of the seasons’ hard work, all enticed the young man as he resolved to try something of everything at one point in the night. Iwaizumi, however, had found Tooru purchasing quite an expensive-looking quilt and had dragged him off to the side of the marketplace, if only to remind him that their money was finite.

“And I still have to pay you!” Tooru nodded, pressing a finger to his lips as his eyes shone in understanding. Iwaizumi looked away, eyebrows furrowed. “Nevermind that. We don’t have a lot of things left to buy - let’s just shop together from now on.”

Tooru was practically bouncing. “Okay!” He clapped his hands together, heaving his massive quilt upwards until he was forced to stop and neatly fold it into a pack.

At that moment, he didn’t notice that his partner had disappeared into the village bodies until he turned to receive his (well-earned) praise for his ultimate folding skills, and instead, found a blinking outline of where Iwaizumi  _ should’ve _ been. Suspicious that someone kidnapped the man, Tooru’s footsteps turned into toe-steps as he (very conspicuously) crept into the centre of the marketplace again, only to have spun around at a strong grasp on his shoulder.

There Hajime Iwaizumi was, standing in front of Tooru with his hands behind his back and the most suspicious smile Tooru had ever seen in his life. Tooru crept closer to the man, vying to peek at what he held behind him.

“What’cha got there, Iwa-chan?” The words came out slowly, as if  _ they _ were the ones circling the man, as Tooru narrowed his eyes. Iwaizumi stepped forward, revealed a brown package, and shoved it into Tooru’s hands.

Opening it, Tooru found many pale little fish, staring at him with fresh eyes on one side. Tooru’s eyes switched between the fish and Iwaizumi, who was watching him just as intensely as he could divide his attention between the two. Tooru waited for a moment, as if the fish could’ve grown legs and began dancing, before he looked back to Iwaizumi for some sort of answer.

“It’s an  _ oikawa _ fish,” Iwaizumi finally revealed, and Tooru wondered, for a moment, what the feeling of being slapped by an Oikawa man’s oikawa fish would feel like. Rolling his eyes, he shoved the fish back into Iwaizumi’s arms. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“I am. Very.”

“These aren’t even big enough to eat!”

“They are if you try hard enough.”

Tooru sighed, walking on and leaving Iwaizumi with his fish until the other man caught up to him, then walking alongside him as if he hadn’t committed the ultimate act of betrayal. With another quick visit to a stall, Iwaizumi handed Tooru a crisp apple, deep-red and freckled with flecks of sun-kissed gold. With just one bite, Tooru’s tongue sang with the sweet juice of the apple, and he hummed, pleased with this apology.

Iwaizumi had just finished a bite of his own apple when he turned to Tooru, their place coming from the marketplace calmer from its centre. 

“You know, you don’t talk like the rest of the people here,” Iwaizumi commented, and Tooru looked at him with an eyebrow raised, head tilted. “Shut up, dumbass. I’m not talking about this village specifically, I’m talking about in general. Where  _ are _ you from?”

Tooru chewed on his lower lip - what was too much of an answer, and what was too little? “The castle.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Iwaizumi grinned, and Tooru couldn’t stop his own grin forming. “And where are  _ you _ from, Iwa-chan?”

Over the period of time that Tooru and Iwaizumi had spent together, as Tooru had stopped counting the days passed, the prince had learned the nuances of Iwaizumi’s emotions the way one might notice an author’s punctuation style, or the one adjective that had been repeated for a grand total of 19 times within the first three chapters.

“Nowhere. But I’m a tracker, and I know that I’m good at what I do. That’s my only constant.”

Tooru’s brows furrowed as he placed the word. “Tracker… like a hunter."

“Tracker as in people hire me to find other people and that’s what brings food to the table.”

There was a silence between them that could’ve only been started or ended with a mistake. However, the cobblestone pathway was uneven. The tip of Tooru’s boot caught on a stone, uprooting it from its placement within the hundred others and almost having tossed Tooru onto the floor, if not for the snap of Iwaizumi’s arm, his stable grip on Tooru. In one fluid motion, he pulled Tooru up until they were both facing each other Tooru’s eyes caught like prey. Then, they left the marketplace to where they had rented a room in the nearby town inn. 

Iwaizumi wasn’t careless when he set their supplies down on the wooden floorboards, their creak akin to that of the old tavern, but Tooru was too preoccupied with his own running ponderings to have noticed any difference within the man. He sat himself down in a nearby chair before his lips parted, a question on his tongue.

“Does it ever bother you?”

They both knew exactly what Tooru was referring to, and they both knew the answer; but there was a palpable desire to hear it, if only to confirm the humanity between a rich man and a bounty hunter. 

“Do you sleep soundly at night?” Tooru’s voice was quiet and his words held a certain quality in the air, a thickness that caught in between the space between the two and Tooru’s throat. The single queen bed groaned under Iwaizumi’s weight, an old friend to many patrons and lovers, and the man inspected his shoes with a new degree of interest.

“I make it a point not to talk to the people I track down, and they don’t talk to me either.” Iwaizumi’s words were soft, absorbed by the walls of the inn. “But I think about them every day. I don’t know if I ever stop.”

“Why don’t you quit, then?” Tooru whispered, loud enough for his words to have been captured but quiet enough to not have been caught. Iwaizumi looked up, scrutinizing him, as if that would’ve helped to make any sense of the man. “What?”

Tooru’s voice grew with each hard-hitting word, one syllable each. “I said, why don’t you stop?”

The downturned corners of Iwaizumi’s lips etched deep lines into his face and he sat back. Every part of him looked tired, every part of him thought of that question when it crept into his late-night thoughts. “It’s not that simple.”

“It  _ is _ ,” Tooru almost whined his words out, and the feeling that flooded his senses reminded him of his 10-year-old self arguing with the king on the premise of stepping into even the courtyard. The room felt colder, all of a sudden, as if the temperature dropped with Tooru’s words. Iwaizumi couldn’t meet Tooru’s eyes, and instead found solace within the frost creeping at the room’s window.

“Become a blacksmith or a shoemaker or  _ something _ ,” Tooru pushed. “You’re strong. The bakers would hire you in an instant. You know the land like a mother knows her son - the apothecary would  _ love _ you, Iwa-chan, you hit it until it breaks-”

“Oikawa.” Iwaizumi’s voice was firm, but his hands shook as they gripped the bedpost. Tooru flinched, but no voices were raised at that moment. “I don’t have the privilege of being rich.”

A noise escaped Tooru’s throat, caught halfway between a sigh and a sob. Iwaizumi’s voice wavered once, just once, when he spoke.

“No one’s born into this, but I was raised to be.” This wasn’t an excuse. It was a confession. “I’m good at it and that’s what matters. Nothing changes hungry mouths to feed. Nothing changes the fact that us common folk live and die in the same moments. I was given a chance to take myself out of the rut of living quick and dying quicker. I took it. I don’t have the luxury to be selfish and do what’s right or what I want. You wouldn’t understand.”

Tears lined the corners of Tooru’s eyes the way dark kohl would line a dancer’s. Iwaizumi cleared his throat, his lips parting with an apology following, but found that his words couldn’t cut it.

“I never left the castle before that day,” Tooru said. “I didn’t know there was a different way to speak other than what I heard from the guards. I didn’t know the world was so big.”

Iwaizumi sat up. Tooru spoke onwards.

“There were guards that I made friends with, only for them to never return, and I never knew why,” Tooru told Iwaizumi, and he couldn’t catch a breath in between his words. They were rivers, no, dams, and Tooru had broken anything that held the water back from rushing out underneath him. “I learned what friends were through books. I learned  _ everything _ through school and books, and I only know so much. I didn’t know-”

Fat tears rolled down his cheeks. “I- I d-d-didn’t know flowers could- could… could come in so many d-different colours,” he whispered, if only to keep himself from choking, gasping on every word only to repeat himself. He was  _ freezing _ . “Everyone taught me h-h-how to be a prince but I don’t know how to  _ live _ . I d-don’t know. I don’t  _ know _ ! And y-you- you-”

Strong arms enveloped Tooru Oikawa; strong, warm, ones that stayed there and squeezed him until his breathing ran easy through his body. “You have it so hard and you’re still trying,” he concluded. “You hit it.”

At some point, the two had moved from the chair to the bed, but it was nowhere on Tooru’s priority list to understand when that happened. They were possessed in a half-state of sitting and hugging and lying down, letting the peace of the after-cry take hold of their hearts.

“I can’t justify what I do, and I’m going to guess you don’t know why you were kept inside for your whole life either,” Iwaizumi murmured, and he drew Tooru closer into his touch, something so unfamiliar to the prince, but still welcomed. “But that’s not the point. It never was.”

Tooru’s breath was caught again, another potential round of hyperventilating was subdued only by Iwaizumi holding him close again. An apology bubbled up within Tooru’s thoughts, and for what? He didn’t know, he didn’t know.

“Shut up, Oikawa,” Iwaizumi chided, no trace of malice found anywhere within his words. “Don’t do that. A man drowns in twenty feet of water and another in seven. Does it matter how deep the water is?”

Tooru sighed and closed his eyes. Exhaustion overwhelmed him in every sense, and a cynical corner of his brain pondered the extra cost of emotional labour, added on to his base fees. “They both drowned, Iwa-chan.”

“Good, you’re not as much of a dumbass as I thought you were.”


	2. The Reaches of the Far North

The mountains rolled gently down, captured in waves, their incline and decline akin to the double-thump of the human heart. There, nestled between these soft hills before they discarded their youth and evolved into the mountainous North, lied a copse of trees that hid its inhabitants from the rest of the world: a man and a prince, settling down as the shadows around them grew their own legs. The chill of the night, attributed to their northern ascent and descent of almost all leaves, is kept bay only by the glow of their campfire.

Having stepped into the light with an armful of wood dry enough to contribute to their fire, Tooru entered the clearing in the centre of their forest only to bask in its warmth for the precious few moments before Iwaizumi called on him to tend to their fire, along with a very rude nickname. 

The sun had long since kissed the surface of the Earth goodnight, but even then, Tooru had to admit that any light he found Iwaizumi in only made him beautiful - the edges of the firelight turned any hard features in his face soft, made his dark eyes glow with what it meant to be  _ alive _ .

Iwaizumi had taken out a cooking pot to start roasting the chestnuts Tooru had foraged earlier in the day, having claimed this forest as their own. He had also procured strips of dried fish from their earlier village-visits, and from the freshwater streams they greeted in passing, they drank their water in canteens, gifts from the Earth.

Later in the night, the fire was just as alive as the two men, shoulders pressed together and heat shared, donned their quilt. Light enough to carry by foot but thick enough to provide them with enough warmth that even their toes, in the morning, could’ve been compared to those covered by thick woolen socks. There was only one quilt for the two men, but neither of them really minded their proximity, as much as they would jostle around in the night.

Even though no part of him was cold, Tooru looked to Iwaizumi and visibly shivered, only for his hands to be wrapped up in the other’s (just as warm) ones. Their legs pressed together.

“Hey, Oikawa,” Iwaizumi murmured, his voice loud enough so that only Tooru could hear him. The rest of the swound was swallowed by the crackling fire, happy to consume its arborous meal. “We’re getting close to the end.”

The corners of Tooru’s mouth quirked into a half-grin, half-smile, something genuine lurking underneath. “And you’re going to miss me, huh?”

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes and looked anywhere but to Tooru. “I wouldn’t even if we were married.”

“Mm-mm!” Tooru’s denial came in song, with high, teasing notes. “You say that, but you’re secretly in love with me, aren’t you? Ha, I can see it in your face, Iwa-chan! You’re-  _ oomph _ -” Tooru’s silence came quick with an elbow to the side.

“Save your breath, Shittykawa.”

There had grown to develop a comfortable silence between Tooru and Iwaizumi when they worked in tandem to one another; Tooru had discovered a natural knack for finding things, which paled in comparison to Iwaizumi’s tracking skills, but was enough to scrounge up foraged edibles when food supplies ran low and the nearest village was a few day’s walk. However, they had already passed their last village before they recognized that they wouldn’t find any more along their journey, for the weather grew colder with each passing night.

“What’re you gonna do after we get there?” Iwaizumi brought up the question of the hour, to which neither of them had an answer to. “Are you going back home?”

Tooru furrowed his eyebrows, scrunched up his nose when the castle didn’t pop up in his mind when Iwaizumi talked of “home”. “I don’t have one right now, Iwa-chan, just a house… that’s a castle. I wonder if I’d still become the King if I returned, hmm?”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” There was genuine curiosity in that question of his.

“I didn’t really like it there,” Tooru confessed, but there was no surprise between either of them at that statement. “I didn’t like my father. I wouldn’t become a good king, much less a great one like they expected a well-educated prince to be. They wouldn’t miss me, anyway, I have a sister.”

Iwaizumi raised an eyebrow. “And you expect her to take your place?”

Tooru shrugged. “Why wouldn’t she?”

There were a lot of answers that ran through Tooru’s head at that moment, dark little things that poked through the edge of his consciousness like a sword to a bridal veil. Who would take his place after he was gone? Would it be his father continuing to rule, or would it be his sister? Or maybe his nephew, Takeru? Who could ever replace him?

“I want to stop thinking,” Tooru sighed, yet found himself wrapped up in a strong hold again. “Your hugs make me feel safe, but it’s hard to accept that they won’t stop me from thinking.”

“I know,” Iwaizumi murmured from above Tooru, where they slid to the ground in mutual agreement. On these types of days, they understood how powerful it was to have someone touch you and understand. “I give you them so that you shut up and sleep.”

Tooru sniffed, not convinced in any way that that was the case, but oh, well. “Are you my mother?”

Iwaizumi was completely miffed, an expression of slight horror having crossed his face at the exact moment that Tooru peeked at it.

For the rest of the night, the little copse of trees echoed with the sound of the laughter of two young men, wrapped in each other’s arms.

*

The greatest adventurers used to tell stories of the creatures of the Far North, whispered in hushed manners through bedtime stories to commoner’s children whose senses of adventure would become placated by duty. 

Creatures barely tangible, they said, creatures with towering legs of ice and a rolling mist that covered their presences within the north. The were stuck between the Starlands and the Far North, between a land here and there. They held themselves high up, with regal faces if you ever got to see them, tapping an ice floe with a massive clawed paw. The mist that rolled off of their bodies padded their steps so that they made barely a sound above a-

“Whisper,” Tooru said, hidden with Iwaizumi from behind a crystalline mound of snow. “Guardians of the Far North.”

There, the whisper wouldn’t have been able to catch them, if they so wished to abscond. It was within reason that they did, and the whisper moved slow until it had set its eyes on its prey, or so it was told. They could’ve come back alive and held their own respective bragging rights of even having  _ seen _ a whisper and coming out alive.

“We’re close,” Iwaizumi whispered to Tooru, who only nodded his head, eyes caught by the grand creature. But, having turned his head, Tooru had come to learn of the different ways Iwaizumi thought; his little peculiarities that came with not exactly being able to express his emotions all too well, but feeling them. And at that point, Iwaizumi chewed his lip, eyes flitting between the pack and a viable pathway, going around the ice lake from which the whisper had bent down to drink from. Tooru knew that Iwaizumi was trying to deduce the chinks in the whispers armour from what he could see of the ice-fog, but Tooru touched his arm, his shoulder, his cheek, cupped it, and drew his attention toward him.

Tooru’s fingers were a warm kind of cold, purposeful. Iwaizumi looked like Tooru had just asked him a difficult question, where he needed to inspect his core morals, instead of provided him with a chance to take down a Guardian.

Tooru’s eyes flitted between Iwaizumi’s face, flushed with the whipping winds and heavy snow of the north. “Don’t.”

Iwaizumi furrowed his eyebrows like Tooru just presented him with a bowl of natto. “What are you talking about?”

Tooru’s hands clasped either side of Iwaizumi’s face; he drew them together, pressed their foreheads together so that when Iwaizumi looked up to inspect the sky, he saw Tooru, Tooru, and everything that was Tooru.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru breathed, and his breath came out in visible puffs. “We’re not fighting the whisper.”

“You need to get to the end of the world, dumbass. That’s why I’m here.”

“And?” Tooru’s eyes were bright little stars. There was the tiniest of smiles that played on his lips, beckoning Iwaizumi to draw closer. Close the distance. “There’s no deadline, Iwa-chan, to reach the end of the world!”

In a land immortal to the generations, where the seasons did not change with the sun, where only the semi-tangible thrived and time was rendered negligible, Tooru Oikawa and Hajime Iwaizumi sat on top of the cliff, facing nothing but the stars with their feet dangling off the edge of the world.

They weren’t worried that they would fall - wherever they went, they would go together, wherever the world restarted and they would be born again. There, their fingers entwined themselves together, in a pattern of one, then another, then another of the first. It was cold, but it was welcomed, for there was a spark between the two men that provided all the warmth they needed.

They lied back so that when they opened their eyes together, they looked up and understood how small they were. It was quiet in the north, and their heartbeats, in tandem, traded back-and-forth their shared music to the backdrop of a million stars.

“Hey, Tooru,” Iwaizumi murmured, and they both shifted their heads to look at each other. “Do you know what you want to do after this, now?”

Tooru looked back up, then raised their interlaced fingers up, up above their heads, like they were about to start making snow angels at the north. “I don’t, Iwa-chan, and I don’t think it matters. Not right now.”

Iwaizumi accepted that answer and closed his eyes, only to open them when Tooru called his name. “Iwa-chan.”

“Yeah?”

“Count the stars with me before we leave.”

**Author's Note:**

> special thank you to my love [mandy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamichigo/pseuds/Mamichigo) for my writing inspiration! i love you so much mandykuto
> 
> and thank you to You All for reading this after i disappeared for literally two-ish years LMAO. i love you all so much, and hopefully i'll be getting more into writing this upcoming season >:)


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